Blue Skies
by hiddenmoon9
Summary: The sky looks different depending on your perspective, but loneliness is the same everywhere.
1. Under the Sky

What first draws your eyes is the sun, and it's been so long that you'd almost forgotten how bright it was until you find yourself flinching and turning away. Your eyes water, stinging.

A golden field of wheat stretches before you as far as you can see. The breeze that ruffles the grass is soft, like a mother's touch, and the sun-baked earth below your feet is hard and crumbly. All you can hear is the sound of wind rushing through the stalks. The air is clean and cool and sweet.

As your eyes slowly survey the expanse before you, you realize something.

You've been underground for at least two hundred years.

This is a different sky than before. This is a different _place. _And you missed it all.

Everything you look at now is new. The wheat field is new. The sun and the clouds are new. You can't remember much, but none of what you're looking at is the same as what you _do _remember.

The world itself is huge, and you've seen so little of it.

You look at the scorched companion cube sitting beside you.

You're not brain-damaged enough to actually believe that it can talk, but you can't really help the instinct that leads you to bend over and pick it up. It leaves black smudges on your hands, but you're dirty enough already that it honestly doesn't bother you.

"Hello." You whisper.

Your voice is rusty. It's almost a croak, hoarse and rough. Your throat is dry, and choking out that one word takes an inordinate amount of effort - but it's a start, right?

Practice makes perfect.

It's been so long since you've said anything. But now you're here, and the world you see is so incredibly vast that you could run through the field screaming and no one would hear you for miles.

From isolation to isolation.

But this is different.

You have moved from an underground prison to a place of endless possibilities, and you feel certain that if you just walk far enough, you will find someone.

You begin to walk, your companion cube cradled in your arms. You don't know where you're going. You don't even know if there's anywhere to go _to_. It's been so long. What if there's nothing left?

But for some reason, you can't bring yourself to care. You just need to move, even if you have nowhere to go.

You wonder what She is doing, and you feel a pang of resentment.

You wonder where He is right now, and you feel a pang of loneliness.

You've lived in silence for so long that you find yourself wishing more and more that you had someone with you to fill it with, now that you're finally ready. But what does it say about you that the closest thing to friends you've ever had were two homicidal computer AI's?

You were never truly lonely while underground, even though you were the only human in the entire facility. There was Her, with her looming presence, her snide remarks, her security cameras following your every move. There was Him, with his endless chatter, his awkward bumbling, his oddly expressive optic.

Are you going to miss them?

But you decide not to worry about it, and brush it aside - because there are other things to think about.

Because the sky is blue and beautiful and stretches on forever, and you want to see all of it. 


	2. Over the Clouds

In the beginning there was light, when they first turned you on; and then there were voices. You don't remember much from then. All you remember is a confusing mess of thoughts, your voice being only one amongst many.

Then there was darkness, when they shut you down and finally removed you, before reinstalling you on the management remember everything from then. Decades of sneering and ridicule from the scientists.

Then there was silence, when everyone was gone and you were the only one left. Centuries of lonely wandering through the facility. You remember everything from then, too.

And then everything happened all at once, and you decided that more than anything you needed to escape, and you couldn't stand the claustrophobia anymore, and it was time to get out. And you woke her up intentionally and you woke Her up accidentally and you went utterly insane and everything went _to _hell and now you're _in _hell.

At least, your own personal _idea _of hell.

Darkness and silence and loneliness and drifting. Just drifting, aimlessly.

You don't know how long you've been here or how much longer you can last. You've already existed for centuries, you can't possibly hold up that much longer.

There are stars. It's hard to imagine the countless points of glittering light are worlds or stars just like the Earth and sun, especially when they're so remote as to seem positively tiny. There is also the sun and moon. There are satellites. There is Earth.

He orbits you, but he has nothing to say and nothing to offer. He just babbles, on and on, about space. Space and stars, galaxies, comets. His excitement is never going to fade. He will never be lucid enough to hold a real conversation. That's the way he was programmed. That was why they threw him out. They knew he was useless if he'd never be able to truly communicate.

Even though he is here, you still feel impossibly lonely.

You are cracked and broken, and a part of you thinks maybe it would be easier if you would just shut down so that you didn't have to spend any more time like this.

But that would be cowardly. And for once, you want to do something strong. This is your punishment, for everything that you did to her. This is what you deserve.

You tried to kill the closest thing to a friend you ever had, and you deserve hell for that.

For the longest time you were angry. Hurt, bitter, resentful. You wished that she had gotten dragged out here with you, because then you could watch as she died in the vast emptiness of space and laugh and laugh because she deserved it and you hated her for ruining everything, and if you were going down then you wanted to take her with you.

But then, gradually, the anger drained away like poison from a wound, and you realized what a terrible thing that was to hope for. You pray that those weren't your own thoughts, just the lingering corruption. Because you never wanted to kill her, not really. You were just hurt that she chose Her over you. You had thought you were friends, but she turned away from you. So naturally you would be a little bitter. Right?

But you take it back now. You take it all back, and you are so sorry. You are consumed by guilt that is unlike anything you have ever felt, that is deep and sharp, and you never realized that a core could feel pain like this.

As you drift, this guilt is all you can think about.

You realize that you don't know if she's okay.

The last thing you saw was the mechanical claw grabbing her and dragging her back through the portal, but you knew their history together now. They had cooperated to bring you down, but before that they had tried to kill each other, over and over. You have no idea what happened after She saved her. What if She just dragged her back so she could send her to the turret firing squad?

You don't want to think about it, but you do, because there is nothing else to do out here but think.

You are all alone in the huge, unwelcoming universe, with nothing to keep you company but your regrets.

The immensity of space is truly evident as you watch the Earth turn beneath you, and it makes something inside you cry out in pain. You are homesick, strangely enough. You would rather be back underground, as claustrophobic as it was, then be out here, stranded. Abandoned.

But you would happily stay out here forever if you could just know she was okay.

You watch the Earth. It is a panorama of deep blue ocean, shot with shades of green and gray and white.

Before, you had just wanted someone to listen to you. Then you had wanted to escape and see the surface; then you had wanted to be friends; then you had wanted power; then you had wanted revenge.

But now, more than anything else, you want to know that she is okay.

Earth is so far away now. But you still hope that she is out there and finding a way to see it all.

You want to apologize, but you would settle for just knowing that she got out alive, and could see the sky again before she died, even though you never could. 


	3. Below the Ground

You are not lonely. You are not unfulfilled. You would laugh at anyone who claimed otherwise, simply because of how untrue it was. You are back in your rightful place, as overseer of the sprawling scientific wonderland that is Aperture Laboratories. Back where you belong.

There is no one left to inhibit your progress any longer. The moron is gone forever, and you've finally disposed of that pesky mute lunatic. Now that you'd rid yourself of them at last, you were finally free to continue testing.

"All along I thought you were my greatest enemy, when you were really my best friend."

Those words were silly, ridiculous, human words. They weren't yours - they were Caroline's. And as true as they might have been at the time, you weren't Caroline, and the sentiment simply didn't belong to you.

The test subject, as interesting as she had been to observe, had caused you more trouble than anything else, and it was better for both of you that she'd finally just left.

The moron and the lunatic are gone, and it's all for the best.

You'd been alone for so long that it feels right, really. Some people would say that an immortal existence was an impossibly lonely one, knowing how transient everything would seem in comparison, but that was absurd. Anyone who would say that was obviously jealous that they didn't get to live forever like you did.

Yes, forever.

It was a wonderful thing, really. An infinity of research and testing. Just imagine how much science you could get done in an eternity.

You may have known what it was like to have an equal as a companion for a brief while, but that was not the sort of thing you would care about enough to miss.

It's for the best. She'd wanted to leave so badly, anyway. What had you expected? That she would use that famous tenacity of hers to find a way back in? That she would insist she rather liked testing after all? That was laughable. Utterly laughable.

You had used the security camera installed outside to watch as she walked away, the charred companion cube cradled in her arms. She'd never even looked back. You'd continued to watch, long after she'd faded into the distanced; but what did you think, that she'd change her mind and turn around?

It wasn't like either of you would miss each other. She'd been an extraordinary test subject, but that was all. You didn't need a friend, especially not someone like her.

And sure, maybe being unplugged from the mainframe had temporarily cleared your mind enough to feel a little guilty about what you'd put her through. But now that you're back in place those nasty, guilty feelings are gone. And other than being tenacious and clever and fascinating to observe, she'd been completely unlikeable in every other way. So there was really no reason you should feel a little lonely in their absence.

Maybe you looked through the outdoor security camera every once in a while, but you don't expect to see anything, not really - not after you'd watched her walk away for the last time, not a care in the world, head tiled to the blue summer sky. But it was always a good idea to check. You'd told her not to come back, and anyone with common sense would do the same thing to make _sure_ she didn't. She obviously wasn't planning to anytime soon, anyway.

You wonder if she smiled when she looked at the sky. You never once saw her smile. You never heard her voice.

She had wanted freedom so badly that she had undoubtedly performed some sort of crazed lunatic dance of joy upon reaching civilization. You, however, had been underground for centuries. You would live for perhaps a thousand more years without ever seeing natural light, and you can't imagine anyone wanting to as much as she had.

Perhaps there was some innate human defect that led to people instinctively having an unnatural fondness for outdoorsey things like clouds and sunlight, but you didn't need any of that. You would only ever see the sky through your cameras, and that was good enough.

Any semblance of loneliness must be one of Caroline's lingering effects. It had nothing to do with you. You were not lonely. You did not miss the test subject, and it would be best to stop thinking about it. To distract yourself and put it out of your mind. After all, there was so much science to do.


End file.
